Seasons
by Quill of Molliemon
Summary: AU, modern-era, non-ninja, pre-Naruto, spoiler-lite. Spring flowers, summer sun, fall rain, winter snow—there's something special about every season... MinaKushi. Read and review please!
1. Spring

**Disclaimer: **I don't own Naruto (what on earth would make you think that I do?), I'm not making any money by writing or posting this, so pretty please no suing. I'm unemployed!

**Notes: **AU, modern-era, non-ninja, pre-Naruto, spoiler-lite. A short four-part story inspired by a few pictures I've seen on the internet (links in my profile).

_Kirei:_ pretty/beautiful (at least, as far as I know that's what it translates to...)

Enjoy!

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* * *

  
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**Season:** _  
Spring_

Uzumaki Kushina despised school. It was long and boring and started way too early. And since her father insisted that she attend private school, she was required to wear a uniform.

She had to wear a _skirt_.

Dresses were inventions of evil. Skirts were even worse. They were short, and cold, and if you weren't careful the whole world would see what kind of panties you were wearing.

Kushina exercised her vocabulary of curses as she ran.

Her father had suddenly been transferred a month ago from the capital of the small seaside country of Whirlpool to Konoha in Fire Country. That meant leaving all her friends and her old school behind. It meant transferring to a new school near the end of the term. It meant misery.

She damned her brothers to every circle of hell, and a few new ones that she made up on the fly. Arashi had started college. Ichi-tora and Ni-tora were close to graduating college. And Kenshin had a nice job back in Whirlpool Country and a pretty fiancée. She was the only one affected by their father's transfer. They were safe and unbothered.

Damn lucky bastards.

Her curses returned to school. Why did it have to start so early? Why did she have to wear an evil skirt? Why did her stupid alarm clock have to fail her today?!

_Damn it! I'm gonna be late! I hate being late!_

She also cursed her hair and herself for making that stupid, stupid bet. Back in elementary school, her bitchy cousin had mocked her mercilessly for being an ugly tomboy and having a boy's haircut. Kushina had let it get to her, and ended up betting that she could grow her hair out long and look pretty. And ever since she had let her hair grow out, and now it was ridiculously long.

Waking up late meant that she had less time to get ready for school. She hadn't had the time to braid her hair, like she always did. Now it was in her face and blowing around her head as she ran—an annoying, blinding tangle of red.

The light snow of pale pink cherry blossom petals carried by the breeze didn't help, either.

Running full tilt, she rounded a corner—

_WHUMP!_

Blue eyes, bright and clear and staring up at her, startled and wide. She blinked down through her messed red locks at… Sun-yellow hair, spiky and soft-looking as a dandelion, a bit long for a boy—

_Oh my god I'm sitting on a boy!_

He was sprawled out on his back on the sidewalk. She was sprawled on top of him, hovering over his face. Her bag was off to the side somewhere and his probably his, too.

A tiny corner of her brain which was somehow still functioning noted that he wasn't wearing a uniform. He was dressed in black jeans and a hoodie sweatshirt almost as blue as his eyes with some kind of long-sleeved dark shirt underneath. That meant that he attended a public school…and was a lucky bastard.

…And _god_ was he pretty.

She felt frozen, paralyzed. She wanted to apologize but her mouth wouldn't move. She wanted to get off of him and run away, but she kept sitting there, on his chest, his heartbeat thumping underneath her hand.

_What's wrong with me?_

Uzumaki Kushina was not mesmerized by pretty boys. She was a tomboy, for all her long hair and stupid skirted sailor school uniform. Boys were things to punch or hang out with, not drool over and dream about—

_I'm getting up now._

She started to sit up—

"Wait!" he blurted, hand upraised beseechingly.

Kushina froze.

"Wait, I think I have something… Let me see…" His hand dug around in his pants pocket for a moment. "Where, where… I'm sure I still have it…"

And then _his fingers were in her hair!_ His fingers were in her hair, combing through it, doing something to it. There was a snap and most of her loose, long red hair was pinned out of her eyes.

She couldn't move. She couldn't blink. She couldn't breathe.

Her face burned.

His fingers were still in her hair.

"_Kirei_..."

Trance broken, she staggered off him, scooped up her book bag, and ran for all she was worth. She ran and ran, all the way until she reached her locker inside her evil new private school. Gasping for breath, she put her lunch and some of her books into her locker—

—And in her tiny mirror saw the little black barrette he'd put in her hair…

* * *

Minato lay on his back on the sidewalk staring up at the clear blue sky as tiny pink sakura petals fell around him like a light snow.

"_Kirei_…" he repeated softly, a dreamy smile tugging at the corner of his mouth. "What a beautiful girl."

She had the reddest hair he'd ever seen; so soft when he'd touched it. Her eyes were pretty, too—a pale blue-green. And she just looked so cute when she'd blushed.

Helping her was well-worth sacrificing his young neighbor Rin's barrette.

Judging by the blouse and skirt she'd been wearing, she attended the private school, which explained why he'd never seen her before. It was a real shame. He would've liked to get to know her.

"…I should've asked for her name," he sighed and reluctantly got up. "Oh well."

He pulled his backpack on, turned towards school, and started to run. He was cutting it close, but he'd make it on time. He wasn't star of the track team for nothing.

There was a reason his friends called him _Kiroi Senkou_—the Yellow Flash.


	2. Summer

**Season: **_  
Summer_

Namikaze Minato sat on a bench in the park under the shade of a tree, hiding from the hot summer sun. His friends either were on vacation with their families, working summer jobs, or had other plans, so he was left to his own devices. With nothing particularly interesting on television, and with the weather being so fair, he'd come out to the park to sketch and maybe compose a haiku or two.

In the open field in front of him, a bunch of older guys and a girl were playing a game of soccer. They looked similar enough to each other that he thought they were related—brothers and sister, or cousins. The one girl was about his age, with long red hair woven into a rope of a braid.

She vaguely reminded him of that private school girl who had run him over in the spring as the sakura petals began to fall.

But this girl seemed rougher, louder, wilder. This girl dressed boyishly in an over-sized T-shirt. There were smears of mud on her face and grass-stains on her knees. She shouted rude, sometimes crude things at her opponents and even her own teammates.

Minato simply couldn't picture that beautiful girl being like her.

Shaking his head, he reapplied himself to his sketching.

Normally he doodled cute, cartoonish toads—toads of all sizes and colors that wore clothes and smoked pipes and carried swords. His Uncle Jiraiya—who wasn't really his uncle, just his godfather—had a thing for toads; his whole house was decorated with them. If his uncle ever wrote a children's book about the toads he loved so much (instead of the explicit romance novels he was known for), Minato would happily illustrate them.

But today he was drawing foxes. Last semester he'd taken an elective course on traditional mythology, and _kitsune_—fox spirits—had caught his attention. Foxes were fast becoming his second-favorite animal.

This particular sketch was turning out to be a halfway decent _kyuubi no kitsune._

_Maybe I'll add some red to it…_

"Hey, look out—!"

* * *

Kushina loved the summer. There was no school, for one thing. And the weather was great, which meant plenty of outdoors time. And it was warmer and less rainy in Fire Country than it was back in Whirlpool, so it was even better.

Summer also meant more free time for her college-bound brothers. The three of them had taken time off their summer jobs, and college-graduate Kenshin had taken some vacation time, to come to Konoha and visit her. And distant cousin Hachiro had decided to tag along for some reason. So for the week-long visit, the small house that she and her father now lived in was ridiculously crowded.

But that was okay, because she loved them all…some of the time anyway.

Eager to take full advantage of the beautiful weather, she'd persuaded them all to come out to the park and play some three-on-three soccer. But when they'd divided up, she'd gotten the short end of the stick. Arashi had a soccer scholarship, and he teamed up with Ichi-tora and Ni-tora—identical twins who could practically read each other's minds. She was stuck with Kenshin, who sucked at the game, and Hachiro, who seemed more interested in checking out other guys. They weren't keeping score, but Kushina's side was losing badly.

Friendly game or not, she was more than a little frustrated, and when Arashi taunted her for the nth time she kicked the ball as hard as she could right at his face.

…He ducked, of course.

And the ball kept right on going and creamed the guy that Hachiro had been trying to surreptitiously ogle for the past ten minutes.

"Smooth _imouto_, real smooth," Kenshin muttered. "Go fetch the ball and apologize."

"Yeah, yeah…" Kushina growled and slunk over to get her ball and make nice with whoever she'd clobbered.

Getting the soccer ball was no problem.

Her victim was something else.

He'd fallen off the bench he'd been sitting on and was still laying prone. It didn't look like he'd moved an inch. And when she got a good look at him, she found that he was out cold.

And familiar.

_Yellow hair… I've seen that before but…where?_ She nudged his shoulder with her toe. _This guy…_ He didn't budge, so she knelt down by his head and poked his cheek. _…Did I kill him?_

Apparently she said that last bit out loud, and everyone descended upon her all at once.

"Killed him?"

"Did you really, little sister?"

"Is there blood?"

"Should we cover it up? I mean—"

"—we can't let _imouto_ go to jail!"

"_Shut up!_" Kenshin snapped, and silence came. He shoved Kushina aside and touched the boy's neck. "He's still got a pulse; you just knocked him out cold. Must've hit his head on the bench when he fell." The eldest brother sighed and dragged a hand over his face. "Arashi, check his pockets for a cell phone. Kushina, check his bag."

Kushina was more than happy to let her big brother manage this mess, and mutely did as she was told.

His bag (still on the bench) was full of books. There was a small stack of library books, a few nature magazines, a few sketch books, and a ragged collection of notebooks. And she found a couple of pencil boxes, filled with all kinds of pens and pencils—regular and colored.

_What a nerd,_ she snorted. _Who goes outside on a beautiful day, and just reads or doodles or…whatever? That's boring._

She spied another sketchbook laying on the ground and rescued it before either of the Tora twins trampled it as they milled around, watching Kenshin attempt to reach someone on what she presumed to be her victim's cell phone. As she tried to un-wrinkle some of the pages, she noticed the things he'd been doodling. And it was all…very good.

Two toads wearing jackets were playing shogi on a giant mushroom. A fox with too many tails was playing with an orb in a forest with giant trees. And there were diagrams of ancient weapons favored by "ninja"—kunai, shuriken, those sorts of things. Some were finished pictures, with great detail and vibrant color. Most were rough sketches; various unrelated scribbles cluttered on the same page. But it was all beautiful and far beyond anything she was capable of.

_I creamed an art geek…_ She sighed and flipped through some more pages, ignoring her brothers and cousin. _I feel like a real jerk now… Art geeks are such wimps._

Then she found a drawing of a girl. The girl was dressed in a school uniform and had long hair. It was a pencil sketch, so there was no color, but…

_Weird. That kinda looks like…me._ Kushina blinked. _And those little things look like sakura petals—_

Yellow hair. Spiky yellow hair. Like sunshine or a dandelion.

_Oh my god…it's __**him**__._

It was the public school boy she'd run over back in the spring. He was the unbearably cute boy who had called her pretty. He was the strange boy who for some reason carried a girl's hair clip in his pocket, and had no issue putting it in the hair of a girl he'd never met before.

_First I run him over, now I give him a concussion. _She closed the sketchbook and sighed. _…Great._

"Hey, he's coming around!"

Kushina shoved everything back in his bag and pushed through Hachiro, Ichi-tora, and Ni-tora who were clustered in her way. The blonde was half-sitting up and staring around at them, a dazed look on his face. She found his blue eyes weren't the least bit mesmerizing when they weren't focused on hers, or able to focus on anything, really.

"Dude, how many fingers do I have up?" Arashi asked, shoving two fingers in the guy's face.

"…Six?"

"Not quite," Arashi chuckled. "What's today's date?"

"I…" He trailed off and apparently forgot that he'd been asked a question. "Where am I?"

"Okay, he totally has a concussion."

"Thank you captain obvious," Kenshin muttered and pressed a black and yellow cell phone into her victim's hands. "Just hang out here; someone's coming to pick you up, okay?"

The blonde blinked at him. "Okay?"

"Right," Kenshin sighed and turned to her. "Seeing as you're the one who scrambled his brains, you sit with him until that woman I got a hold of picks him up." He picked up the forgotten soccer ball and started to leave. "I don't know about you guys, but I'm going to get some lunch."

"Food!"

"Hey, wait for us!

"Yeah, wait!"

"Do you want me to stay?" Hachiro asked hesitantly.

"Nah," Kushina grumbled, waving him off. "Go make sure they don't eat everything in the house, okay?"

"Sure thing!"

And then she was alone with the blonde, artsy, concussed boy.

"Hi," he smiled. "What's your name?"

She told him. And told him, and told him. But it always seemed to just slide in one ear and out the other.

_He won't remember,_ she thought as a ridiculously busty blonde woman—some family friend, and luckily also a doctor—led away the boy she called "Mina-chan." _Thank god he won't remember…_

_Now if only __**I**__ could forget __**him**__…_


	3. Fall

**Season:**_  
Fall_

Uzumaki Kushina was well accustomed to rain. In Whirlpool Country it tended to rain a lot; if a solid week passed with no rain at all, people started muttering about droughts. The only place rainier that she knew of was _Ame no Kuni_—the Land of Rain—where it was said to at the very least drizzle daily, and seeing the unclouded sun was as rare as catching a solar eclipse.

It hadn't rained much in the spring in Fire Country, and barely rained at all during the summer. But the rain came with a vengeance when fall rolled around. And according to her classmates, it would rain through winter. There would be no snow unless there was a freakish cold snap. _Hi no Kuni_ simply had too warm a climate for a real winter, or even a real fall.

There were few bright colors of changing leaves. If the trees shed them at all, they just slowly turned a dull brown and just as slowly fell. Combined with the frequent rain storms and the near-permanent cloudy skies, it made autumn rather damp and grim.

_I hate it here,_ she thought savagely. _Sure it was always wet in fall back in Uzu, but at least there were pretty colors! Fall in Fire Country is ugly!_

She sat on a low brick wall outside of Konoha's public library and numbly watched the occasional car drive by as raindrops soaked through her hated school uniform. After school had let out for the summer and all the way up until the next term started in the fall she'd begged her father to let her enroll in the public school. But he hadn't wavered one inch and kept her at the evil private school.

Private schools provide higher-quality education, he'd said. Good grades meant more coming from such institutions, and that led to easier college entry. And it would, in turn, lead better jobs and a more secure living.

He didn't seem to care that all the teachers were boring and inflexible as a box of rocks. He thought she was exaggerating when she claimed all the students were a bunch of stuck of snobs and that she hated them all. He was wholly unbothered by the fact that she utterly despised and completely loathed the school's uniforms.

_I think Daddy hates me,_ she pouted. _He's been lying to me all these years when he claimed to love me. He likes seeing me suffer…_

She'd come to the library to work on a group project for her history class. Her group was a poor nerdy boy whose allergies annoyed her, and a pair of gorgeous airheads. So that meant that she and the geek were doing all the work and the bimbos would do the presentation. Kushina drearily hoped that the two brainless pretty girls could pick up enough vital information from the written report she and stuffy-nose had been writing to give a sensible and coherent talk to the rest of the class.

_Sometimes I wonder why I even try,_ Kushina sulked. _I hate everything about that school. Maybe if I totally flunk all my classes they'll boot me out and then I'll __**have **__to go to the public school…_

Idly fingering the end of her wet braid, she mentally kicked herself yet again for forgetting her umbrella in her locker, and her coat at home. It wasn't as if she needed them; she didn't mind getting wet one bit. It was just really embarrassing for her, a native of a drizzly climate, to forget her rain gear anywhere when the weather was so wet.

She toyed with the idea of heading home—her need to be at the library was through. But she was cranky and the mild rain suited her mood perfectly. She felt no particular desire to head home where the only company was her private-school-loving father.

So she stayed sitting on the squat brick wall in the rain and spaced out.

_Why did Daddy have to get transferred? Why couldn't I have stayed back in Whirlpool with Kenshin and stayed at my old school? They had uniforms, too; but at least I had the option of wearing pants…_

_Maybe…maybe I can talk Daddy into letting me move in with Kenshin-nii-san for next semester, and—_

The rain stopped falling on her, but she could still hear it pattering all around her. She blinked, and looked up to see the underside of a red umbrella. Her eyes traced down the handle and then up the hand holding it, to lock with a pair of concerned, bright blue eyes framed by a mop of spiky, sun-yellow hair.

"You shouldn't be out in the rain like this," he said. "You'll get sick."

_Oh. My. God._

He tilted his head curiously. "Have I…met you before?"

Kushina cringed. "Um…I guess." _Does running someone over, and then giving him a concussion later count as "meeting" them?_

"You guess?" he blinked.

"…That blonde lady called you 'Mina-chan'?" she offered weakly.

"Ah," he laughed in embarrassment and rubbed at the back of his head. "I've asked Tsunade-oba-san to stop calling me that…but she never listens to me. When did you met her?"

"Over the summer," she shrugged, "in July. She came to get you when…well…"

"Oh…the concussion…" The poor guy looked mortified. "Jiraiya-oji-san said that I said a bunch of stupid stuff after that, but I don't remember—I didn't say anything stupid to you, did I?"

"Nah, not really." She nervously squeezed some excess water from her long braid. "Unless you count asking the same question over and over again."

"I'm really sorry," he apologized sheepishly. "What did I ask you?"

"You wanted to know my name."

He shifted anxiously for a moment. "If you tell me this time, I promise I'll remember."

"Uzumaki Kushina," she informed him. "Now what exactly is 'Mina-chan' short for?"

"Namikaze Minato," he nodded politely to her. "It's very nice to properly meet you, Uzumaki-san."

"Likewise," she snorted. "What time is it?"

"Um…" He peered at his wristwatch. "About a quarter to six."

"That late?" she blinked. "Crud. I should get going, then." She hopped off her seat and scooped up her bag. "Well, it was nice talking to you Namikaze, but…what?"

He wasn't looking at her anymore. Actually, he just wasn't looking at her face, but lower… She glanced down to see if anything was on her shirt—and immediately regretted not wearing a jacket, regretted her white blouse, and regretted her choice of bra (a dark blue, lacy thing her brother's fiancée had given her for her last birthday).

"_Pervert!_" Kushina snapped, punched him in the head, and stormed off.

_Boys!_ she thought savagely. _Why do they have to be such horny little pigs?!_

* * *

Minato clutched at his throbbing ear with his free hand and dazedly watched the red-head stomp into the rain and out of sight.

"She punches hard," he muttered to no one in particular.

And then it caught up with him just what he'd done.

"Oh my god, what did I just do?!"

He'd believed that he was above his godfather's corrupting influence, but when she'd stood up and her soaked white shirt had clung to her front and he'd seen…

_Bad thoughts!_ Minato squeezed his eyes shut and vigorously shook his head. _Bad thoughts! Very bad thoughts!_

"I'm so screwed," he groaned, tenderly rubbing his bruised ear. "She's never going to speak to me again…"

_…Why me?_


	4. Winter

**Season:**_  
Winter_

The last time that it had really snowed he'd been about five or six. His parents had still been alive and had spent the whole weekend playing in the icy white stuff with him. It had been a lot of fun, and for years afterwards he'd always been disappointed when it hadn't snowed.

Now all Minato could think as trudged through yet another snow drift was how cold and miserable it all was.

_At least it's winter break and I don't have to try and walk to school in this._ He sighed, and saw his breath condense into a little misty cloud. _I should've just stayed inside…_

But staying inside meant putting up with Uncle Jiraiya singing Christmas carols very badly, and setting up multiple sprigs of mistletoe all around the house. Going to Aunt Tsunade's house wasn't an option either; she tended to stay at least half drunk throughout the holidays to help forget that her baby brother and fiancé were dead. And not feeling up to visit with his friends, his only escape meant wandering around snow-covered Konoha.

He sighed again. _As Shikaku would say: How troublesome…_

Winter always made him feel gloomy. The days were short and dark, and it was always cold and rainy (and in this case: snowy). And when the holidays rolled around, he was unhappily reminded that he was an orphan.

This year was even worse than usual, as all his friends had managed to find a significant other. They had special little Christmas gifts to buy. They had someone to kiss at midnight on New Year's Eve. They had a reason to look forwards to Valentine's Day and White day.

He didn't…though not for lack of trying.

Freshman year he'd briefly dated a girl he'd developed a crush on in middle school, but it turned out that she was more interested in trying out as many boys as possible rather than just sticking with the proper "one at a time" approach and their relationship hadn't last more than a month. After that mess, he'd gone on a string of blind dates, usually with Inoichi's nicer ex-girlfriends. But not a single one had gone on to be something more.

He paused and noted what street he'd ended up on. It was a narrow stretch lined with cherry trees; a place he passed through every day on his way to and from school. It was where…he'd first encountered _her_.

_The first girl I've felt interested towards in a long time…and she goes to another school and thinks I'm as perverted as Jiraiya-oji-san._

"Hey! Hey, over here!"

_That was real smooth,_ he mentally kicked himself. _Just when I finally get her name, I ruin any chances of ever talking to her again…_

"_Hey!_ Turn around! I know you can hear me!"

_But who am I kidding? A pretty girl like her…she probably has a boyfriend already._

"Oi, Namikaze!"

He blinked. _…Huh? Who's—_

_THWACK!_

* * *

She loved snow, especially fresh snow. Old snow was full of footprints or gray with car exhaust. Fresh snow was white and clean and sparkling—a sort of blank slate. It gave her a little thrill to be the first one to put her mark on it.

When Kushina had rolled out of bed that morning, she'd been delighted to see a decent carpet of snow blanketing everything. She'd barely paused for breakfast before bolting outdoors to play. This kind of snow was supposedly rare here in Fire Country, so she was going to enjoy every moment of it.

But regrettably her enjoyment didn't last. As she crossed over part of her route to school, she ran into a bunch of jocks who attended class with her. Normally she would've hung out with these guys, but they were snobs, jerks, and thought that girls were only good for cooking, house-keeping, sex, and baby-making. And that attitude made them her enemies.

Worse, some creep had put up some mistletoe on the street sign and they'd caught her under it. They got into a friendly argument as to which of them would get to "unfreeze the ice bitch" and blocked all her means of escape. If there hadn't been so many of them, she would've punched them where it really hurts and ditched them. But if she tried here, they could retaliate before she took them all out and ran off. It was too dangerous; she needed a "Plan B."

By some miracle, she spied a perfect "Plan B" just down the street. If she could get a tolerable boy to kiss her and release her from the mistletoe trap, she wouldn't have to suffer a nasty kiss from one of the douche bags that had her surrounded. And Namikaze, the artsy sunshine-blonde, was definitely a guy she would classify as "tolerable."

All she had to do was get his attention and she was sure that he'd help her out. The problem was that he'd seemed to have developed some severe hearing loss as no matter what she yelled at him, he failed to react. Frustrated and rather desperate (the jocks had noticed her possible savior and had sped up their competition of rock-paper-scissors), she chucked a snowball at him and hit the back of his head.

_Haha! Got your attention now!_

When he turned around, he looked really mad.

_Aw, crap…_

"Hey, Red!" one of the creeps laughed. "Calm down! You don't need him. We'll save you from the mistletoe."

"I'd rather skip the kiss and take the consequences, thank you very much!" Kushina snarled, leaning away from the speaker.

"Well that's just too bad," another one purred. "We're going to help you, whether you like it or not."

"And maybe we'll manage to unfreeze you in more ways than one!" a third crowed.

Real panic started to claw at her chest. No one would ever try something like this back at her old school. No one would dare. Her brothers would beat them to a pulp, or her friends—whichever group caught up with the offenders first.

But she had no friends here. Her brothers were busy with work or college, and were miles away. Her reputation was left back in Whirlpool. She had no protection here.

"If any of you jerks touches me I swear I'll sterilize you in the most painful way possible!" Kushina hissed, pressing her back against the signpost.

"Relax, Red," the first one—the captain of the swimming team, she thought—soothed. Or at least he tried to soothe, it was sort of ruined by the leering smile on his face. "We just want to show you what you've been missing!"

"I'd rather miss out!" she snapped, shivering. "Buzz off!"

The rock-paper-scissors thing seemed to have been abandoned in favor of letting the swim captain have the honors. The tall, lean senior closed the gap, braced one hand on the sign pole over her head, and started to close in for the kill. The pack of jocks leaned in, eager to watch.

"Now just hold still, baby," swimmer boy chuckled. "And no bitin—_gah_!"

Kushina blinked and watched as her enemy lurched away from her and crumpled to the snow. His free arm—which he'd probably meant to grope her with as he took advantage of her—was twisted painfully behind his back. And polite, gentle, sun-shiny Namikaze Minato suddenly looked very mean and badass.

"I believe that Uzumaki-san has made it perfectly clear that she does not desire your 'help,' so kindly respect her wishes and back off."

"Son of a—_ow_!" the jock cursed and twisted free, rubbing at his abused wrist and shoulder. "You little punk!"

Minato just stared him down, his blue eyes icier than the ground under their feet.

"So, you want her for yourself, is that it?" swimmer boy sneered, staggering to his feet. "Well go ahead then, have at her. She's not going anywhere until someone gets a taste."

If anything, Minato's stare grew colder. But when he turned to her, his eyes lost their steely look. It was like it had caught up with him what he was doing, and he was regretting it.

_Damn it, you're not chickening out on me!_

Her desperation made her more impulsive than usual, and she snagged him by the wrist and dragged him in. It was half-head-butt, half-kiss, but there was lip-to-lip contact so it counted. Before anyone could recover, she was out of there, running as fast as she could through the snow and towing her poor many-times victim with her.

"See you later, scum-suckers!" she snarled at the jocks, and then disappeared around a corner.

Kushina didn't stop until she reached a strip of shops where there were other people around. If the jerk jocks followed, they wouldn't dare do anything in front of witnesses. It was safe to stop here.

"I'm sorry…about that…" she muttered between pants. "And the snowball…but I really…really needed to…get your attention."

"Who were they?" he asked, massaging his bare hands.

"Jocks, mostly from the swim team. They're a bunch of chauvinistic creeps who think all girls are in love with them." She stomped excess snow off her boots with more force than was necessary. "I hate them so much! If there had only been three or four of them, I would've kicked their asses!"

"Ah," he blinked. "Is it bad that I can't feel my fingers?"

"Yes," she frowned and immediately grasped his naked hands with her gloved ones and tried to warm them up with a little friction. "Don't you have any gloves?"

"It's never cold enough to need any," he shrugged.

"Yeah, that's what everyone says," she sighed and glanced around at the nearby shops.

"Eh?"

"I moved here last spring," Kushina grumbled. "I came from _Uzu no Kuni_, where it snows every winter, and people are sensible enough to own gloves."

"Ah," he chuckled nervously.

"Here," she led him by the arm across the street and into a coffee shop.

She despised coffee; it tasted disgusting. But coffee shops also sold non-coffee beverages, and that's what she was after. She sat him down at a little two-person table and bought two hot chocolates—one for him and one for her.

"There!" she grinned and presented him with the drink cup. "That will fix your hands, and everything else, too!"

Minato rubbed the back of his head sheepishly. "You didn't have to—"

"I wanted to," she smiled. "Besides, it's like an apology…seeing as every time I run into you, I beat you up a little bit."

He blinked, and smiled back. "You do, don't you."

Kushina swallowed hard and dropped her eyes to the melting marshmallows in her cocoa. _Stupid cute smile!_ "So, um…drawn anything cool lately?"

"What?"

"That time in the summer, I was trying to find your cell phone to call someone after the concussion thing and I saw some stuff in your notebook." She peered up at him, and found that he looked quite horrified. "What, was I not supposed to look at all the pretty pictures? I thought they were pretty cool…"

"You…liked them?" That seemed to ease his mind a great deal.

"Of course I did! They were really good!" She peeled her gloves off and sipped at her hot chocolate. "I really liked that fox with all those tails. Did you ever finish it?"

For a good two hours they ended up talking about that and a whole bunch of other things. She complained about how horrible her school was. He amused her with stories of all the crazy things his friends did. And somewhere in there, they exchanged phone numbers.

Kushina was glad. She'd finally found someone interesting and cool to hang out with. It was a horrible shame that they didn't go to the same school, but at least they didn't live too far apart. It had taken the better part of a year, but she'd finally found a friend, and just in time for the holidays too!

She had no designs on dating him, though. She was Uzumaki Kushina, tomboy for life! She did not date boys, no matter how pretty or charming or funny or nice or awesome they were. No, he was just a friend.

Although, on Christmas, when she found a wrapped picture frame with a pencil drawing of two foxes sharing a scarf and sitting under a snow-covered toad statue, she felt her resolve waver a teeny-tiny bit…

* * *

**THE END...  
...or is the beginning?**


End file.
